I am next for a ten mile race! Mine is tomorrow and I am quite nervous about it. The race I will run is the 'Dam to Dam run', one of the most popular runs here. 30,000 participants will run from Amsterdam to Zaandam (a town just north of Asd). The scary thing for me is that I, as a member of a running club, run in the race, I mean the real one. So picture me before the start tomorrow: "Oh hi, Lorna Kiplagat! Great you could make it! Hello Fabiano Joseph! Congratulations on your HM world record! Hi Robert Cheboror! Nice break from winning all those marathons, eh?" Okay, I know, I know. Behind these awesome people there will be a lot of club runners like me. But in a way that's even more scary. Most of these will still run faster than I will. So I will have to stop myself from trying to keep up with them - and thus ruining my own race... Anyway, I am going to try to do two things: 1. Have fun and 2. Finish under 1:30. Hopefully both! I will let you know tomorrow how number 855 has done bas

Good luck, Bas! Keep your head as I know you will and you'll do just fine!

Fabiano Joseph beat me and most of the others (Francis Kibiwott won the men's race in 45:27), Lornah Kiplagat beat her own World Best time for 10 miles: 50:50, so she was faster than me too. So how did the runner with number 855 do? I did not quite reach my second goal. My time was 1:30:53. But it is a PR! Last year (my first Dam tot Dam) was 1:36:15. Also I managed to finish this time without having to take a walking break, as I was forced to do last year. Still, when I look at the statistics I see that especially between 10 and 15 km I was slower than I hoped I would be. The last part of the race I managed to run faster again. I will try to boost my endurance with a long run of about 1.5 hours once a week (and not too fast!) Hope this will make some difference in the HM that I will run in october. BTW, the Dam tot Dam is an amazing event. The atmosphere is fantastic! Part of the route is through streets in the northren part of Amsterdam, where people put up flags and streamers in their front yards, put their stereo outside, shout encouragements and try to give you water and fruit every five meters So that should tell you something about my first goal: It was fun! bas

nice run bas! That race sounds awesome. Just use boston qualifying rules for your time-- it doesn't matter how many seconds into the minute you are, if the cut off is 3:10, then you actually have until 3:10:59. So, looking at it this way, you met both goals